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William Carey bore a name which had slowly fallen into forgetfulness after services to the Stewarts, with whose cause it had been identified. Professor Stephens, of Copenhagen, traces it to the Scando-Anglian Car, CAER or CARE, which became a place-name as CAR-EY. Among scores of neighbours called William, William of Car-ey would soon sink into Carey, and this would again become the family name.
I never spoke of them of a place without showing them a set of views of it, for I have a theory that the young remember more by the eye than by the ear. In this way a place-name conveyed to them a definite idea, for they had seen half-a-dozen somewhat garishly coloured presentments of it. The young love colour. Then my second method came into play.
Their knowledge of the place-name may be at least as old. No other difficulty seems to hinder the derivation of 'Kent' from the form 'Cantium', and the whole argument based on the name thus collapses.
Sometimes the place-name, illustrated in the last line quoted, is definite: "There was twa sisters in a bower, Edinburgh, Edinburgh, There was twa sisters in a bower, Stirling for aye There was twa sisters in a bower, There came a knight to be their wooer, Bonny Saint Johnston stands upon Tay."
There would be something to do indeed if tourists were to ask the meaning of every place-name they meet with, and if they depended on local replies their last state would certainly be worse than their first. But an intelligent inquiry into the origin of place-names is always delightful and useful.
I have given the plan of the caves of Lamouroux in my "Deserts of Southern France." How general rock habitations were at one time in Perigord may be judged by the prevalence of the place-name Cluseau, which always meant a cave that was dwelt in, with the opening walled up, window and door inserted; roffi is applied to any ordinary grotto, whether inhabited or not.
The Meneage, which we find affixed to several other parish names immediately north of the Lizard, clearly derives from the Cornish mên a stone and denotes the "stony district"; just as Roseland signified the heath or moorland district. Whenever we find man in an early place-name, we can feel pretty sure that it has no reference to the human species.
In many instances, the existence of a place-name which has now assumed an English form is no proof of English race.
Spencer would find a mid-point between a common ghost and Mtanga, in a ghost of a chief attached to a mountain, the place and place-name preserving the ghost's name and memory. But it is, I think, a far cry from such a chief's ghost to the pre-human, angel-served Mtanga. Of ancestor worship and ghost worship, we have abundant evidence.
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